FRANKENSTEIN
Perhaps the first study of the consequences of a machine that thinks is a prophetic novel called Frankenstein, written more than a hundred years ago, in 1818. The author, then only 21 years old, was Mary W. Godwin, who became the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
According to the story, a young Swiss, an ardent student of physiology and chemistry, Victor Frankenstein, finds the secret of life. He makes an extremely ugly, clever, and powerful monster, with human desires. Frankenstein promptly flees from his laboratory and handiwork. The monster, after seeking under great hardships for a year or two to earn fair treatment among men, finds himself continually attacked and harmed on account of his ugliness, and he becomes embittered. He begins to search for his creator for either revenge or a bargain. When they meet:
“I expected this reception,” said the daemon.
“All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you my creator detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.”
Frankenstein starts to comply with the main condition, which is to make a mate for the monster; but Frankenstein cannot bring himself to do it. So the monster causes the death one after another of all Frankenstein’s family and closest friends; and the tale finally ends with the death of Frankenstein and the disappearance of the monster.
As the dictionary says about Frankenstein, “The name has become a synonym for one destroyed by his own works.”